October 2025

The Digital Health Institute for Transformation (DHIT) hosted the most recent edition of our popular Digital Health Happy Hour series at American Underground, a premier coworking and entrepreneurship community for innovators, creators, and changemakers in the heart of downtown Durham, NC. For our headlining fireside chat, sponsored by Bluedoor Group, we were joined by a pioneer of consumer healthcare, Web Golinkin, now president of Babson Diagnostics, who spoke candidly about a career defined by chasing one central question: how do we make healthcare more accessible?

For Golinkin, access was never an abstract principle. It was the throughline from his early foray into health television to his pioneering role in retail clinics, and now to his current pursuit – reinventing blood testing. He laid bare the challenges, missteps, and small victories that, taken together, form a philosophy of transformation grounded in persistence.

The Origins of Access

Asked about how he began thinking about healthcare access, Golinkin took the audience back to the 1990s. Before startups and clinics, there was cable television.

“I noticed there wasn’t much health programming on television,” he said. So he pitched and produced the first nationally syndicated health shows, eventually launching America’s Health Network, a 24/7 health cable channel that reached 30 million households.

But what stuck with him weren’t the ratings – it was the callers. People dialing in to Ask the Doctor programs often began with a telling preface: “I really appreciate the chance to ask a physician a question because I either don’t have one or can’t get in to see them.”

That unmet need planted a seed: perhaps healthcare could be reimagined by bringing care closer to where people already lived their lives.

The Retail Experiment

That idea became RediClinic, one of the earliest retail clinic models, placing nurse practitioners and physician assistants in drug, grocery, and big-box stores.

The mission, he recalled, was simple: “Provide consumers with easier access to high-quality, affordable healthcare.” What sounds obvious today was radical at the time. Retailers hesitated. Payors initially resisted. The medical establishment bristled at using non-physician practitioners at the frontlines of care.

“People told me I was crazy,” Golinkin admitted. Yet the model worked because patients liked it: convenient locations, extended hours, high quality care within a limited scope of practice, short visits, and pharmacy co-locations. Eventually, RediClinic was acquired by pharmacy giant Rite Aid.

Still, scaling access was never simple. At FastMed Urgent Care, where Golinkin later led 170 clinics, the pandemic stress-tested every assumption. “Healthcare during COVID was extremely challenging,” he said. “But the most important job was to support our patient-facing team members.”

FastMed delivered 10 million visits, growing to become the second-largest independent urgent care provider in the nation. It was proof, if imperfect, that the retail model could bend the curve on access and cost.

Lessons from the Dragons

Golinkin is the author of Here Be Dragons (and a monthly newsletter of the same name that is published on Forbes.com), and when asked about the hurdles – “the dragons” – of pioneering healthcare models, he didn’t mince words.

“There was no manual for opening a clinic in a Walmart,” he said. Every barrier – leasing, construction, staffing, contracting, federal and state regulations – required creativity and endurance. But for him, the effort mattered beyond his own ventures. Competitors and traditional providers followed suit, extending hours and broadening access.

“We made a dent in the system,” he reflected. Not victory, but impact.

A New Frontier: Diagnostics

After decades of running clinics, Golinkin could have retired his experiment. Instead, he chose to tackle what he calls the “linchpin of modern medicine”: blood testing.

“Seventy percent of diagnoses are based on blood tests,” he said. “And yet a third of patients don’t get tested, because of needle phobia, or because it’s too inconvenient.”

Enter BetterWay™ Blood Testing by Babson Diagnostics. Incubated at Siemens Healthineers and officially founded in 2017, the company spent a decade perfecting a method for clinically accurate testing from a pea-sized amount of blood – what Golinkin calls the “flip side of Theranos.”

“Theranos was all about the promotion, and the technology was never there. Babson is the opposite. It’s been all about the science, and we have just begun to commercialize.”

With more than 45 Institutional Review Board (IRB)-approved clinical studies, 4,300 participants, and 850,000 tests, Babson has built the evidence base to withstand skepticism. Recently, the Journal of Applied Laboratory Medicine even featured their work on its cover.

Trust, Time, and the Marathon

Healthcare innovation, Golinkin warned, moves slowly. “You’re not going to change something that’s been done the same way for 70 years overnight.” His advice: manage change carefully, avoid overpromising, and preserve credibility.

At the same time, he believes in bold moves. Babson recently announced a three-year partnership with Olympic gold medalist Gabby Thomas – “arguably the fastest woman in the world” – who also holds degrees in neuroscience and epidemiology. “She joined,” Golinkin explained, “because healthcare is her passion and she believes that the BetterWay system will expand access to care.”

Asked what he would tell his younger self, Golinkin paused. Then: “It’s a marathon, not a sprint. Behind every overnight success are people who worked like crazy for years without recognition.”

He added two more lessons: treat everyone with respect, (“the world is round, you’ll meet the same people again”), and build the best team you can. “If I’m the smartest person in the room, we’re in trouble,” he quipped.

The Future of Care

So, what does access look like in 10 years? Golinkin sees fingertip blood testing embedded in pharmacies, clinics, and employer worksites, and eventually at home. He also sees virtual care and AI reshaping delivery and support services – but always with a human core.

“The human factor,” he insisted, “is always going to be critical.”

In the end, the story of Web Golinkin is not about disruption for its own sake. It is about persistence in the face of skepticism, determination in the face of institutional resistance, and an unwavering conviction that healthcare can meet people where they are.

“Twenty-five years later,” he said, “nobody’s exactly figured out how to make healthcare truly accessible. But we’re getting closer.”